While the assessment of Charles Brady's painting can be left to another occasion, the quality of his character and gift for friendship should not go unrecorded. For it was these that brought the very wide circle of people who, while admiring, may not have owned a work of his, to throng the church in Dun Laoghaire for his funeral Mass.
They were all there because they had known Charlie, some for almost a lifetime, others only recently, or had spent some time with him as a student. All had felt their lives thereby enriched. In fact just a few weeks before his death, a young student, starting to make her way, told how she could never forget her time studying with him; she had come to think of him as a father figure and, on getting his address, had written immediately to renew their friendship. Throughout his life he had this wonderful gift of wide empathy with an extraordinary range of people, so that friendship was almost instant as well as lasting - and this because he valued it so much and nurtured it.
This is shown in particular by the number of these who survived from his time as a student in the Arts Students' League in New York, which is also a tribute to his correspondence with them, which, through its spontaneity and frequency, kept the friendship alive in spite of distance and infrequent meetings. Many of these, on trips to Europe, would make a point of including Dublin in their itinerary so that a meeting could take place.
This aspect of his character was very vividly brought home to me on a visit to New York when a long-time friend, a cartoonist with the New Yorker, remarked: "You know, it's extraordinary, but I know Charlie better now through his letters since he went to live in Ireland than when he was living here and we met practically every day."
To encounter Charlie in the street - and blessedly one could still do that in Dublin - or in a pub could light up a whole day. His conversation was not only lively and knowledgeable but also wonderfully responsive to his companion, the company, the social situation. He was widely acknowledged as a delightful conversationalist and this meant he didn't dominate the encounter or party, but rather that his contributions enlivened the whole company so that everyone felt part of the occasion and was enriched by it.
This aspect of Charlie's personality - his lack of pretension, his acceptance of life as he found it, his confidence in his own aims - was finely brought out in the recent TV documentary in which Sean O Mordha's sensitive response to the personality of his subject leaves a treasured memorial of the man as much as the painter.
While steering clear of Brady as painter - not an easy matter - his sensitivity to all painting must be mentioned. It was profound; and his appraisal and judgement of other painters' work was perceptive, immensely sensitive, and absolutely firm - and indeed much sought after by those who had come to rely on it. It must, however, be emphasised that this was for painters to whom the medium was important; work springing more from theory than response found little of this last in him.
Charlie's passing has left a void in very many lives, particularly in those where his presence, perhaps if only on the phone, was a reassurance of life's quality and value.
D.McA.